As a loyal standard Windows shell (explorer.exe) user I often encounter some problems with the number of opened Windows on one desktop. Since my current notebook hardly ever goes down, so does the user’s shell. After a few working evenings, I often have difficulty localizing the desired windows. Having something like 40-50 of them, it is usually a hard task to switch between internet browser, IDA, programming IDE, virtual machines, file manager and so on. The worst thing for me turned out to be looking for the TotalCommander window (being used the most frequently). A situation like this was obviously causing much of a time waste and consequently frustration.
I came up with a few available solutions, listed below:
- Having the taskbar items sorted at any time, thus making the current work state much clearer.
- Creating a set of system-wide hotkeys, each responsible for setting focus on the associated window or a group of windows.
- Start using some kind of Virtual Desktop software and reorganize the whole work environment.
All of them sound pretty good, in fact, and each is worth being described in detail. What is more, there is a great amount of free software designed just to help users with such problems. However, what everyone should already know is that the best solution is the made-by-myself one ;-)